Bing Brings Some Real-Time Data Into Search Result From Twitter

Lots of discussion has been happened on Real-Time Search and Result. There are search engines like twitter, scoopler, which provides realtime data to your query. TechCrunch post shows the real time search result for few search engines. Bing, a new search engine from Microsoft, is also in the race to provide real time search result. Today Bing unveiled an initial foray into integrating more real time data into search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.

This includes Tweets from folks from Bing’s own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest.

Starting later today, when you search for these folks names in association with Twitter, you’ll see their latest Tweets come up in real time on Bing’s search results. For example, if you type “Kara Swisher Twitter” or “Kara Swisher Tweets” or even “@karaswisher” as your search query, you’ll see something like the below. (Note this feature will be rolling out gradually over the course of the next few hours so you may not see it right away.)

The answer will include that person’s latest Tweets, along with an easy link to “See more tweets” from that individual.

Bing is not indexing all of Twitter at this time. It index just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers and their tweets. It has picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets.

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Does Your Twitter Application Name Contain Word “Twitter” ?

Everyone knows that “Twitter” is one of the HOT thing on internet today. It provides you a way to know what great people are doing ? Whether they are CEOs or celebrities you can follow them and get their status updates. Twitter is growing in a very rapid manner.

Below graph shows you the unique twitter visitors.

Lots of new twitter applications and services are rolling out every week. Till now application developer can use “Twitter” word in the name of their twitter service or applications. However it won’t be the case in future. Recent post by Biz Store mentioned about this.

According to Biz, “We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of "going after" the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.”

“Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well. After all, Twitter is the name of our service and our company so the potential for confusion is much higher. When folks ask us about naming their application with "Twitter" we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line.”

In short, you can use "tweet" in your twitter application's name, but you can not use word "Twitter".

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Global Gaming Factory X AB Acquires The Pirate Bay & New File - Sharing Technology, p2p 2.0

Global Gaming Factory X AB (publ) (GGF) acquires The Pirate Bay website, http://www.thepiratebay.org, one of the 100 most visited websites in the world and the technology company Peerialism, that has developed next generation file-sharing technology. The responsibility for, and operation of the site will be taken over by GGF in connection with closing of the transaction, which is scheduled for August 2009.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site, " said Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF. ”The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers ´need faster downloads and better quality, " continues Hans Pandeya.

GGF acquires domain names and related web sites, including http://www.thepiratebay.org. The consideration for the purchase amounts to MSEK 60 consisting of at least MSEK 30 in cash and up to the equivalent of MSEK 30 in the form of newly issued shares in GGF (according to valuation in connection with the completion of the acquisition). The stock share of the purchase price is expected to be equivalent to a maximum of three per cent of the total number of outstanding shares of GGF after the acquisition. In the case that three percent of the shares is not equivalent to 30 MSEK, the major shareholder of GGF has declared that he will contribute the equivalent in cash.

GGF has entered into an agreement to acquire the shares in Peerialism AB. Peerialism AB is a software technology company with its origin in KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science and which presently is owned by the employees. The owners as well as the employees will continue to work for the company. Peerialism develops solutions for data distribution and distributed storage based on new p2p- technology. The access to the technology is secured by the acquisition. The consideration amounts to in aggregate MSEK 100 consisting of at least MSEK 50 in cash and up to the equivalent of MSEK 50 in newly issued shares in GGF (according to valuation during a period of ten days after the announcement). The share part of the purchase price should not exceed five percent of the total number of shares in GGF after the transaction. In addition GGF has undertaken to make initial investments of MSEK 25 in the acquired business.

“Peerialism has developed a new data distribution technology which now can be introduced on the best known file - sharing site, The Pirate Bay. Since the technology is compatible with the existing it will quickly allow for new values to be created for all key stakeholders and facilitate new business opportunities”, says Johan Ljungberg, CEO Peerialism.

Completion of the acquisitions are primarily subject to GGF obtaining financing for the acquisition, that any necessary resolutions are adopted by a General Meeting of GGF, and that GGF and the Board of Directors consider that the acquired assets can be used in a legally and appropriate way. GGF intends to issue new shares in order to obtain the necessary financing for the acquisition. The acquisition is deemed to be completed in August 2009. In connection therewith,the ownership of, and responsibility for, the acquired assets will be transferred to GGF.

“As a result of the acquisitions of The Pirate Bay and Peerialism, GGF will have a strategic position in the international digital distribution market. File sharing traffic is estimated to account for more than half of today's global Internet traffic. The Pirate Bay has a global brand and holds a key position with over 20 million visitors and over one billion page views per month," says Hans Pandeya.

See the complete PR

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Mozilla Advances the Web With Firefox 3.5

Mozilla today announced the official release of Firefox 3.5, a major update to its popular, free and open source Web browser. Coming one year after the launch of the critically acclaimed Firefox 3, Firefox 3.5 introduces cutting-edge features, as well as new support for a wide variety of Web standards.

Firefox 3.5 is the best performing browser Mozilla has ever released and delivers radically improved JavaScript performance, a new Private Browsing mode, native support for open video and audio, and Location Aware Browsing. The newest version of Firefox is more than two times faster than Firefox 3 and ten times faster than Firefox 2 on complex websites. With extensive under-the-hood work to support new technologies, Firefox 3.5 is the most powerful and complete modern browser and helps upgrade the Web experience.

Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox has a comprehensive post here.  The post includes a list of some of the coolest Firefox 3.5 features, excerpted below.

• Firefox 3.5 is available in more than 70 languages – get your local version.
• It includes tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode, and the ability to go back in time and Clear Recent History.
• Firefox 3.5 has support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio.
• The browser features faster performance on complex websites using new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• Users can enjoy Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
• Web developers can make use of native JSON parsing, and web worker threads.
• This release includes improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Firefox 3.5 supports new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, <canvas> text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.

You can download Firefox 3.5 at firefox.com and enjoy the new features and faster performance. If you’re using the latest version of Firefox 3.0, you can get Firefox 3.5 by clicking on the Help menu and then selecting Check for Updates.

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Google Launches Its SMS Service In Africa

Africa has the world’s highest mobile growth rate and mobile phone penetration is six times Internet penetration in Africa. One-third of the population owns a mobile phone and many more have access to one. In such continent, SMS are important to transfer information. Most mobile devices in Africa only have voice and SMS capabilities. In order to make the usage of SMS more effective, Google announced Google SMS in Africa.

Google SMS is a suite of mobile applications which will allow people to access information, via SMS, on a diverse number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather, sports, and more. The suite also includes Google Trader, a SMS-based “marketplace” application that helps buyers and sellers find each other. People can find, "sell" or "buy" any type of product or service, from used cars and mobile phones to crops, livestock and jobs.

It also offers a useful service called Google SMS Tips, an SMS-based query-and-answer service that enables a mobile phone user to have a web search-like experience. You enter a free form text query, and Google's algorithms restructure the query to identify keywords, search a database to identify relevant answers, and return the most relevant answer.

         

Both Google SMS Tips and Google Trader represent the fruits of unique partnerships among Google, the Grameen Foundation, MTN Uganda and local organizations*.

*BROSDI, (Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative), Straight Talk Foundation, Marie Stopes Uganda.

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Spike In Searches For Michael Jackson Misled To Google News As an Automated Attack

News about the death of pop star Michael Jackson broke the heart of millions. It was unbelievable when news was spread over initially on twitter and other sites and initiated a huge traffic for search engines. As word spread of his death, millions and millions of people from all over the world began searching for information about the pop icon. The following chart shows the meteoric rise in related searches around 3:00pm PDT:

Search volume began to increase around 2:00pm, skyrocketed by 3:00pm, and stabilized by about 8:00pm. As you can see in Google Hot Trends, many of the fastest rising search queries from yesterday and today have been about Michael Jackson's passing (others pertained to the death of another cultural icon, Farrah Fawcett). People who weren't near a computer yesterday turned to their mobile phones to check on breaking news. It was one of the largest mobile search spikes, with 5 of the top 20 searches about the Moonwalker.

The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a "We're sorry" page as shown in below image before finding the articles they were looking for.

 

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Google Announced AdSense for Mobile Applications

Mobiles are now an essential part of our day to day activities. With the growth of mobiles, lots of new mobile applications are rolling out these days. Now one can monetize these mobile applications with Google Adsense. Google announced beta launch of AdSense for Mobile Applications which allows developers to earn revenue by displaying text and image ads in their iPhone and Android applications.

See the below example image showing targeted advertising in Android and iPhone applications.

Check out this short video of Howard Steinberg, Director of Business Development at Urbanspoon, discussing his experience with AdSense for Mobile Applications.

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Turn Any Computer Into Both A Client & A Server Using Opera Unite

Opera today unveiled Opera Unite, a new technology that shakes up the old client-server computing model of the Web. Opera Unite turns any computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the Web, without the need for third-party servers.

Opera Unite is a unique technology that turns any computer or device running Opera into a Web server. In other words, your computer (running Opera Unite) is truly part of the fabric of the Web, rather than just interacting with it, and it’s something anyone can use. With Opera Unite, everyday non-technical users can serve and share content and services directly from their own computers in the form of intuitive applications.

Opera Unite makes serving data as simple and easy as browsing the Web. For consumers, Opera Unite services give greater control of private data and make it easy to share data with any device equipped with a modern Web browser.

Traditionally, when a user runs a Web server in a home network, the network has a device that acts as a firewall, which needs to be configured separately, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A traditional Web server setup

Typically, the user will need to open ports and enable port forwarding to a local computer in order for people outside the firewall to be able to access the server.

However, when the user is using Opera Unite, no configuration is needed, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The set up when using the Opera Unite server in your browser

The Web server initiates a connection to the proxy, which uses this to pass information back about incoming requests.

For Web developers, Opera Unite services are based on the same open Web standards as Web sites today. This dramatically simplifies the complexity of authoring cutting-edge Web services. With Opera Unite, creating a full Web service is now as easy as coding a Web page.

Opera Unite is available in a special version of the Opera 10 desktop browser from Opera Labs. Opera Unite services run directly in the browser.

It is easy to use Opera Unite

1. Download the Opera Unite build from http://labs.opera.com/.
2. To start Opera Unite, click the Opera Unite logo in the lower left-hand corner of the browser and log in with your existing Opera ID — the same Opera ID used for other Opera services such as My Opera and Opera Link. Opera Unite will prompt you to register an Opera ID if you do not have one.
3. Now you are ready to use Opera Unite. Simply access your Opera Unite services from the Opera Unite panel of the browser. New services can be installed from http://unite.opera.com/.
4. Running a service will give you a direct Web address to the Opera Unite service on your device, for example: http://notebook.jondoe.operaunite.com/photo_sharing/, where “notebook” is the name of the local device serving content, “jondoe” is your username, and “photo_sharing” is the Web service being accessed. That link will also allow others to access the same Web service from your computer through their Web browser.
5. You may also see which friends are using Opera Unite services on your My Opera Unite home page.

Current Opera Unite services are as follows:

• File Sharing

  Securely share a file from your personal computer without waiting to upload it. First select the folder from which you would like to share files. Opera Unite then generates a direct URL to that folder. By giving that link to your friends, you can share files without routing through a third-party Web service.

• Web Server

  Run entire Web sites from your local computer with the Opera Unite Web Server. After selecting the folder containing your Web site, you can share and host it from the given Opera Unite URL. Opera Unite will automatically recognize index files and create the Web site as you designed it.

• Media Player

  Rock out wherever you are by accessing your MP3s and playlists from any machine. After selecting the folder containing your playlist, use the Opera Unite direct link to play your tracks directly in any modern Web browser.

• Photo Sharing

  Share your photos direct from your PC, without uploading them online. Once you select your photo folder, the photo-sharing service will create a thumbnail image gallery of your photos. Clicking the thumbnail will present the photo in its original resolution.

• The Lounge

  The Lounge is a self-contained chat service running on your computer. Your friends can access the chat room via the direct link, which will not require them to sign into any service. Depending on your privacy settings, you need only provide the generated password to your service in order for people to log in to your chatroom.

• Fridge

  Post a note on your friends’ virtual refrigerators. By sharing the direct link to your refrigerator, you and your friends, family or colleagues can exchange notes securely and privately in real time.

These six services represent the beginning of what is possible. Web developers can unleash their creativity to design unique Web services and, in doing so, unlock the full potential of Opera Unite.

• An introduction to Opera Unite
• Opera Unite developer’s primer
• Markuper — The Opera Unite service template library

Check out below video for more details:

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Customize Your Wolfram|Alpha Home Page!

Wolfram|Alpha, a computational Knowledge Engine,  is one of the most discussed stuff on blogosphere these days. Couple of enhancements have been made since the release. Today they announced a new feature which helps you to customize your Wolfram|Alpha home page. With a simple click of your mouse, you too customize your home page with one of three Wolfram|Alpha home page layouts and nine different colorful themes.

The Full Home Page shown below features quick and easy tips to help you query.

Add some color to your Wolfram|Alpha experience by choosing the Minimal Home Page, containing the Wolfram|Alpha computation bar, or the Minimal Home Page + Search, which makes it easy for you to query Wolfram|Alpha and search the web.

Those cool graphics you see in themes two through four (across, left to right) were designed in Mathematica, and themes seven and eight are examples of simple programs discussed in Steven Wolfram’s groundbreaking book A New Kind of Science.

Click here to download your new Wolfram|Alpha home page.

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Twitter Applications (Part – 49)

More twitter applications. If you have developed any such twitter mash up, feel free to send me an email about it. I will be happy to include in the list. Please first check whether your application is already included or not.

To get latest twitter news and applications check out this Twitter News Page.

385. TweeSpeed : TweeSpeed is a web service giving you the number of tweets sent in the last minute. It shows you the tweets on speedometer. TweeSpeed is based on the public timeline, grab information for the 5 last minutes and calculate an average speed for one minute, so its not 100% accurate however it gives you some idea about how many tweets tweeted in last minute. Speedometer will refresh by itself every minute.

386. Twittas : Have you ever thought to find out who was your first follower or whom did  you follow first ? You may also like to know when did you tweet first time and what was your first tweet? or probably you might be interested in knowing the time when you will be having 1million followers ? Well, you can know even much more. Twittas is a service for twitter users which answers all your such questions. You just have to enter your username, no need for password.

387. ScreenTweet : ScreenTweet is a useful site that provides you an easy and simple way to share videos, pictures, screen shots, and images on Twitter. You can use your twitter account to do so, no need to open a new account there. Simply enter your twitter account on the right and start sharing your videos, screen shots, photos & images. Also works with YouTube, Hulu and IgniteCAST. You can also add sound to your picture tweets! Currently it supports for MP3.

388. TwitterTrain : TwitterTrain will actually get you more followers on twitter. Concept is very simple. The 1st thing you will need to do is log in your twitter account, You will then be redirected to a page to click and follow the vip users and the regular users. After following you will be able to join the train! The train reset every 40 users and the vip will never reset and will always remain at the top for maximune followers. Remain active on the site and watch your follower count rise to the top.

389. Twitcaps : Twitcaps is an application that allows you to browse and capture the latest images posted to Twitter via any of the popular Twitter image services (Twitpic, yFrog, Twitgoo, etc). From the Twitcaps interface, you may capture an image for later use, re-tweet the image on your own Twitter feed, or share the image on any number of social linking services.

390. Twubs : Twubs are Twitter groups built around content aggregated from #hashtags (a user-created standard for identifying tweets belonging to a topic). You can view the full social landscape of a Twub with tools such as Live Tweet Feed which pulls in external images, videos and links, and Tweetups & Events Scheduler.

391. Buzzom : Buzzom is a social media management Tool. There are many tools available to control and manage your twitter account but there is no easy to use web-application available to grow your network. Having understood the significance of such a service, InRev came up with the web application “TwitIn”. The application not only allows you to grow but also analyses your behavior and gives you some important scores which would be a valuable to track your growth and influence among your network.

392. twAitter : Twaitter is the Twitter Client and Scheduling Platform. Twaitter provides many good feature that will help you to manage your growing influence on twitter. Using Twaitter, you can

• Schedule your twitter messages
• Set your twitter messages to send on recurring basis: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly
• Manage your scheduled messages (Twaits) with powerful calendar tool that works just like your Outlook calendar
• Register your blog or business RSS feed with twaitter and have your new posts automatically sent to twitter
• Have a lot to say and a lot to schedule? Upload a file with your messages in Twaitter file format and it’ll be happy to schedule all the twaits for you.

You can find previous all parts of twitter applications at:

Part-1                          Part-2                          Part-3                          Part-4

Part-5                          Part-6                          Part-7                          Part-8

Part-9                          Part-10                        Part-11                        Part-12

Part-13                        Part-14                        Part-15                        Part-16

Part-17                        Part-18                        Part-19                        Part-20

Part-21                        Part-22                        Part-23                        Part-24

Part-25                        Part-26                        Part-27                        Part-28

Part-29                        Part-30                        Part-31                        Part-32

Part-33                        Part-34                        Part-35                        Part-36

Part-37                        Part-38                        Part-39                        Part-40

Part-41                        Part-42                        Part-43                        Part-44

Part-45                        Part-46                        Part-47                        Part-48

OR

you can see all twitter related stuff here.

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11 Million Safari 4 Downloads In Three Days

Apple released safari 4  for Mac and Windows PC earlier this week which was in beta till the time. Safari® 4 is built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3. Apple today announced that more than 11 million copies of Safari 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads of Safari for Windows.

“Safari 4 is an incredible success on Mac and Windows with more than 11 million downloads in the first three days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari users love the incredible speed and innovative features like Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow.”

Starting with the development of the open source WebKit browser engine, Apple has been leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS Effects, enabling an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Congratulation to safari team for developing such a most innovative browser.

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PayScale Provides Decision-Based Answers to Bing Salary Searches

PayScale, Inc., the world's largest real-time salary dataset, announced a service that enables all Bing users seeking answers to salary related queries to receive immediate answers from PayScale.com's 17.5 million+ dataset. PayScale is providing instant answers to salary queries on Bing for the 4000 most popular job titles (e.g. architect, concierge, lawyer). Searches will return national salary figures, with metro-specific information also available.

"Extending PayScale's real-time salary data capabilities to Bing users is another proof point that workers and job seekers are hungry for this kind of information and that the Web has become a go-to source for decision-making intelligence" said Mike Metzger, CEO of PayScale. "Even during a volatile economic downturn where jobs are being lost, salary data and career-related information will stay top of mind for all workers and job seekers. PayScale, with our real-time dataset, will offer Bing the freshest, most accurate salary information currently available."

Real-time salary information, analytics, and career-planning tools from PayScale serve as a resource for millions of individuals every month. Business leaders needing to make strategic HR decisions and manage their talent find PayScale's compensation suite of business applications to be a powerful aide in a quickly evolving job market.

According to Microsoft Corp.'s announcement, the company identified three design goals to guide the development of Bing: deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions.

Every day tens of thousands of people take PayScale's salary survey to compare their pay anonymously with their peers and improve their understanding of the job market. PayScale has created the concept of anonymously comparing your salary online - in detail - to other real people with similar individual and job characteristics (e.g. location, company type and size, job title, experience, education, skills, and more.) Using an advanced search and proprietary matching technology, PayScale finds a relevant peer group from its dataset that matches the user-provided job information. The system allows every user's job profile to be unique and relevant to his/her different job requirements. This creates a level of accuracy that cannot be achieved with traditional methodologies and allows individuals to better understand earning potential.

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